“I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams.”

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson - “I may be cynical when I say that...” 1

Similar quotes

“On more than one occasion I have been ready to abandon my whole life for love. To alter everything that makes sense to me and to move into a different world where the only known will be the beloved. Such a sacrifice must be the result of love... or is it that the life itself was already worn out? I had finished with that life, perhaps, and could not admit it, being stubborn or afraid, or perhaps did not known it, habit being a great binder. I think it is often so that those most in need of change choose to fall in love and then throw up their hands and blame it all on fate. But it is not fate, at least, not if fate is something outside of us; it is a choice made in secret after nights of longing.... I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams... To be a muse may be enough. The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must. Suddenly the enchanted city fades and you are left alone again in the windy desert. As for your beloved, she didn't understand you.The truth is, you never understood yourself.”

Jeanette Winterson
Read more

“While I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw;For I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being....And I saw that it was holy”

Black Elk
Read more

“I awoke in the deepest night to find I had been divided from myself. There lay my body sleeping and dreaming, and I was outside it; awakening. When we dream we may take shapes other than our own; a man may be his brother, a woman a king, and never question it. So, with the certainty born of a dream, I knew I'd become my own shadow.”

Sarah Micklem
Read more

“I think cynicism is more enduring than sentimentality.”

Alexander Payne
Read more

“When the rose is gone and the garden fadedyou will no longer hear the nightingale's song.The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil. The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.If love withholds its strengthening care,the lover is left like a bird without care,the lover is left like a bird without wings.How will I be awake and awareif the light of the Beloved is absent?Love wills that this Word be brought forth.”

Rumi
Read more